ESPN announces College GameDay location for Week 1 of 2024 season

They are coming to your city, College Station. Texas A&M will be hosting ESPN's College GameDay for Week 1 of the 2024 college football season. Mike Elko's Aggies will be welcoming Marcus Freeman's Notre Dame Fighting Irish to Kyle Field for their critical Week 1 matchup. While most view Notre Dame as a serious College Football Playoff contender, Texas A&M actually has a fairly navigable schedule.

Of course, the college football season actually starts the weekend before. ESPN will be overseas in Dublin to see the Florida State Seminoles take on the ACC rival Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in Week 0. Unless you do more than shoot hoops and turn left and really love some ACC football, you may want to wait a week to see college football in all its splendor down in College Station, Texas, brother.

A lot can change between now and the end of the season, but it is hard to nitpick ESPN deciding to go to College Station for this game. We know Notre Dame is good, and we think Texas A&M might be. With Jimbo Fisher out of the mix, we might see the Aggies finally live up to the hype. If Elko could win games with lesser resources at Duke, just imagine what he can do with all that Texas A&M oil money...

And if you were not pumped for this game already, take a look at this sweet graphic to get you there.

Let's discuss what could be in store for the Aggies and the Fighting Irish this college football season.

ESPN will be coming to College Station for Week 1 of College GameDay

For Notre Dame, the Irish simply need to go 10-2 to have a realistic shot at making the expanded playoff. This will be Freeman's third year on the job since taking over for Brian Kelly internally in South Bend. He had a difficult task of replacing Notre Dame's best head coach since Lou Holtz, but Freeman has started to show that he may have staying power leading one of college football's marquee teams.

As for the Aggies, this year should be all about washing out the remnants of the Fisher era disaster. It is no surprise that Texas A&M fell apart at the seams once Elko left College Station for Durham two years ago. Although he may know some of the guys on the roster, or recruited them, this feels like Texas A&M finally has a chance to compete. Look for the Aggies to finish around 8-4 this season.

Overall, these are the type of non-conference matchups we are hoping for to start the year. Notre Dame may be a national independent, but how often do the Irish face the Aggies on the gridiron? Not often enough, I would say. Regardless, there will be plenty of time to go to places like Athens, Austin, Columbus and Eugene this year. Having an opportunity to go to College Station early makes sense.

The winner of this game will be the talk of the town in the college football world entering Week 2.